Israel is this year’s guest of honor at the important Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), and — asÂ HaaretzÂ reports — the state plans to “bring in the big guns”: Shimon Peres, as well as “best-selling authors A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Etgar Keret and Savion Librecht, Israeli theater icon Gila Almagor and even the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Prof. Ada Yonath.”

The FILÂ explained their selection of IsraelÂ by saying that, “The landscape of Israeli literature is an authentic mosaic and melting pot of trends and styles” and, according to fair chairmanÂ RaÃºl Padilla LÃ³pez,Â the fair offers Israel “the privilege and the space to conduct open dialogue and to make itself heard among people that are not familiar with its culture and to bring them closer to it.”